Aspects of the present invention are directed to an apparatus a system and a method employing a heat pipe to facilitate a fast start-up of a combined cycle or rankine cycle power plant.
During start-up operations for a combined cycle or a rankine cycle power plant, a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) may experience thermal stress that limits a degree to which the start-up operations can be completed in a relatively short period of time.
Generally, in the start-up operations, various components of a power plant, such as the HRSG are subject to rapid temperature increases. Such temperature increases, if uncontrolled, can result in structural damage to the HRSG tubes and headers. To prevent this damage, a slowing of gas turbine start-up operations has been attempted but has associated costs in terms of lowered power production. In other cases, a use of a temperator for fluids inside the HRSG tubes and a designing of costly HRSG systems that can withstand high temperature ramp-up rates have also been proposed but are costly and difficult to achieve.